## Fragile and Conflict-Affected Economies Are Falling Further Behind

_IMF Blog, January 21, 2022_

## Source details

**Canonical URL:** [Fragile and Conflict-Affected Economies Are Falling Further Behind](https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2022/01/21/fragile-and-conflict-affected-economies-are-falling-further-behind)

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## Bibliographic details
- Authors: Franck Bousquet
- Published: January 21, 2022

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### Overview and context
- Even before the pandemic, fragile and conflict-affected states (FCS) confronted some of the greatest challenges among the world’s economies.
- While not all FCS face active conflict, most are at risk: global levels of violence are at a 30-year high and more than 80 million people had been forcefully displaced prior to the discovery of the coronavirus.
- The continuing pandemic poses a significant risk that the divergence between these countries and the rest of the world will widen—and persist.
- The IMF classifies more than 40 economies as fragile and conflict-affected. Examples include Libya, Yemen, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Haiti and Papua New Guinea.

### Economic impact and projections
- Per capita incomes in fragile states won’t recover to near their 2019 levels until 2024, IMF projections show.
- By 2024, the gap with pre-crisis per capita income trends is set to remain larger for FCS than for other countries.
- In these vulnerable economies, slower recovery has followed an especially hard hit from the pandemic:
  - Their per capita gross domestic product contracted 7.5 percent last year.
- Debt and inflation pressures are mounting:
  - Compared to pre-pandemic projections, public debt rose by 17 percentage points to 78 percent of gross domestic product in 2020.
  - Fragile states saw consumer prices surge 9 percentage points above their pre-pandemic projections.
  - Global food prices rose 23.1 percent last year, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

### Social and structural vulnerabilities
- Fragile states are already home to nearly 1 billion people and are on course to be home to 60 percent of the world’s poor by 2030.
- Fragility characteristics:
  - Reduced institutional capacity and limited service provision for the population.
  - Limited ability to manage or mitigate social, economic, political, security or environmental risks.
  - Conflict-affected states have active armed violence leading to civilian or military deaths.
- Fragility and conflict interact with—and are often exacerbated by—global trends such as climate change, soaring food prices and gender inequality.
- Food inflation particularly exacerbates food security challenges and is reversing past progress.

### Policy implication and priority
- These challenges underscore how fragile states risk falling even further behind the rest of the world—and why supporting them, more than ever, must be an international priority.

*Source: Fragile and Conflict-Affected Economies Are Falling Further Behind (IMF, January 21, 2022).*

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## References

- [https://www.imf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Chart-1-COTW-Fragile-States-updated-1.0-1.jpg](https://www.imf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Chart-1-COTW-Fragile-States-updated-1.0-1.jpg)
- [respond to the pandemic](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Policy-Papers/Issues/2021/03/30/Macroeconomic-Developments-and-Prospects-In-Low-Income-Countries-2021-50312)

_Source: https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2022/01/21/fragile-and-conflict-affected-economies-are-falling-further-behind_